The Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet in California, Sonora, and Western Texas | Page 9

side of the sea, countries where the summer is perpetual, the population numberless, and the cities composed of great palaces, like the Hindoo traditions, "built by the good genii, long before the creation of man."
There is no doubt, indeed it is admitted by the other tribes that the Shoshone is the parent tribe of the Comanches, Arrapahoes, and Apaches--the Bedouins of the Mexican deserts. They all speak the same beautiful and harmonious language, have the same traditions; and indeed so recent have been their subdivisions, that they point out the exact periods by connecting them with the various events of Spanish inland conquest in the northern portion of Sonora.
It is not my intention to dwell long upon speculative theory, but I must observe, that if any tradition is to be received with confidence it must proceed from nations, or tribes, who have long been stationary. That the northern continent of America was first peopled from Asia, there can be little doubt, and if so, it is but natural to suppose that those who first came over would settle upon the nearest and most suitable territory. The emigrants who, upon their landing, found themselves in such a climate and such a country as California, were not very likely to quit it in search of a better.
That such was the case with the Shoshones, and that they are descendants from the earliest emigrants, and that they have never quitted the settlement made by their ancestors, I have no doubt, for all their traditions confirm it.
We must be cautious how we put faith in the remarks of missionaries and travellers upon a race of people little known. They seldom come into contact with the better and higher classes, who have all the information and knowledge; and it is only by becoming one of them, not one of their tribes, but one of their chiefs, and received into their aristocracy, that any correct intelligence can be gained.
Allow that a stranger was to arrive at Wapping, or elsewhere, in Great Britain, and question those he met in such a locality as to the religion, laws, and history of the English, how unsatisfactory would be their implies; yet missionaries and travellers among these nations seldom obtain farther access. It is therefore among the better classes of the Indians that we must search for records, traditions, and laws. As for their religion, no stranger will ever obtain possession of its tenets, unless he is cast among them in early life and becomes one of them.
Let missionaries say what they please in their reports to their societies, they make no converts to their faith, except the pretended ones of vagrant and vagabond drunkards, who are outcasts from their tribes.
The traditions of the Shoshones fully bear out my opinion that they were among the earliest of the Asiatic emigrants; they contain histories of subsequent emigrations, in which they had to fight hard to retain their lands; of the dispersion of the new emigrants to the north and south; of the increase of numbers, and breaking up of portions of the tribes, who travelled away to seek subsistence in the East.
We find, as might be expected, that the traditions of the Eastern tribes, collected as they have occasionally been previous to their extinction, are trifling and absurd; and why so? because, driven away to the east, and finding other tribes of Indians, who had been driven there before them, already settled there, they have immediately commenced a life of continual hostility and change of domicile. When people have thus been occupied for generations in continual warfare and change, it is but natural to suppose that in such a life of constant action they have had no time to transmit then traditions, and that ultimately they have been lost to the tribe.
We must then look for records in those quarters where the population has remained stationary for ages. It must be in the south-west of Oregon, and in the northern parts of Upper California and Sonora, that the philosopher must obtain the eventful history of vast warlike nations, of their rise and of their fall. The western Apaches or the Shoshones, with their antiquities and ruins of departed glory, will unfold to the student's mind long pages of a thrilling interest, while in their metaphors and rich phraseology, the linguist, learned in Asiatic lore, will easily detect their ancient origin.
It is remarkable to observe, how generally traditions and records will spread and be transmitted among nations destitute of the benefits of the art of printing. In Europe, the mass were certainly better acquainted with their ancient history before this great discovery that they are in our days, as traditions were then handed down from family to family--it was a duty, a sacred one, for a father to transmit them to his